Lyman Beecher's recommendatory blurb for the works of Andrew Fuller

The writing of advertising blurbs has a long, interesting history that goes back well into the 18th century. This is not the place to enter into that. But I did recently come across the following fascinating blurb by Lyman Beecher (1775–1863)—all of whose seven sons entered the ministry, including the famous Henry Ward Beecher (there is a new bio of him that I need to read), and whose daughter, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin—the friend of Asahel Nettleton and an Edwardsean divine. It comes on page 8 of the ads at the back of James D. Knowles, Memoir of Mrs. Ann H. Judson (10th ed.; Boston: Gould, Kendall, & Lincoln, 1838) and is Beecher’s recommendatory blurb for Gould, Kendall & Lincoln’s two-vol. edition of the Works of Andrew Fuller. This Boston publishing house had published Fuller’s corpus in “two large octavo volumes on fair type and fine paper” at a cost below former editions, which were selling for $14 US (then!).

Beecher was thrilled to lend his name to the selling of this work. As he wrote—and note his linking of Fuller’s name with that of Jonathan Edwards:

“Gentlemen:—I cheerfully accord the testimony of my high approbation to the Works of Andrew Fuller. He is one of the few great, original, and holy men, whom God occasionally raises up to dispel the mists which gather about the truth, and bring out the unobscured illumination of the Word of God. No human mind has ever been unerring in all its expositions of revealed truth; but Edwards and Fuller have comprehended, in my opinion, both the letter and spirit of the Bible in an eminent degree. With both I have been deeply conversant, from the commencement of my ministry to the present day, and have uniformly and earnestly recommended to theological students and young ministers, to imbue their minds with their heavenly dispositions, to acquire their habits of accurate definition and discrimination, while they possess themselves of their judicious opinions and powerful arguments. A better service for the truth, to the present day, can scarcely be done, than by the extensive circulation of the Works of Andrew Fuller. May it please the Lord to give you great success in the enterprise.”

A new work by Samuel Pearce

Through the editing of Samuel Pearce's Memoirs I have discovered a work of Pearce I had completely overlooked hitherto: the circular letter of the Midland Association for 1794. Not sure why I have never known of this before. It is listed in Starr, but it seems I never really noticed it! Maybe the reason is in the fact that Pearce wrote the Association Letter for 1795, often reprinted on the sovereignty of God. I guess I thought he would not have written the letter two years running. How dimwitted this historian sometimes is!

Weeping with Andrew Fuller

When Andrew Fuller heard of Samuel Pearce's death, he was on a street in Scotland. He had to turn aside into an alleyway and weep. Reading the story of Pearce afresh: the wound is still there.

This week I hope to finish the critical edition of Fuller's memoir of Pearce. May the brokenness of the author at the death of his friend be again a blessing to the people of God.

A reading plan for the works of Andrew Fuller

I was recently asked by a dear Irish brother for a plan of reading when it came to the works of Andrew Fuller. The following is what I suggested.

 

Without being self-serving, I hope, begin with the Armies of the Lamb. There is nothing like getting into a figure by reading his letters.

 

Then I would suggest his circular letters, those written for the Northants Association, in chronological order. These give you some idea of Fuller the churchman in the midst of connectional links and associational network of friends and fellow pastors.

 

Then read some of his sermons, esp. the ones on the ministry, justification, and soteriological issues.

 

His Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation is his most important controversial work. After it, read his Letters on Sandemanianism.

 

Finally, read his Memoirs of Pearce. What he includes in that work says so much about his piety.

A learned ministry, the danger of arrogance, and wise words from Andrew Fuller

Historically, one of the key differences between Baptists and Presbyterians—fellow Kingdom-sojourners for much of their respective histories (one thinks of the friendship of Andrew Fuller and Thomas Chalmers, for example)—is an area that is rarely discussed, namely, the concept of a learned ministry. Far more Baptists than Presbyterians have recognized that God can and does call to pastoral ministry men who have not had formal theological education. In Baptist history, one thinks of John Bunyan, for example, or John Gill, that indefatigable commentator, or Fuller, the theological father of the modern missionary movement, or William Carey or those remarkable preachers C.H. Spurgeon and Martyn Lloyd-Jones (yes, the “Doctor” was a Baptist—read his lecture on baptism in his three-volume study of Christian doctrine). To be sure, these men read and studied and were self-educated, but they lacked formal credentials.

Having spent twenty-seven years in formal theological education, I am more than ever conscious that while such an education is extremely desirable for an effective ministry, it is not indispensable. And I am ever so glad that my Baptist forebears made room for men like those listed above, some of whom are among my theological mentors as a Christian. To think that because a man lacks formal credentials, he cannot reason and write with powerful acumen and insight is simply a species of arrogance.

Andrew Fuller, by trade a farmer, by calling one of the profoundest theologians of the Baptist profession, surely had it right when he said:

As to academical education, the far greater part of our ministers have it not. [William] Carey was a shoemaker years after he engaged in the ministry, and I was a farmer. I have sometimes however regretted my want of learning. On the other hand, brother [John] Sutcliff, and brother [Samuel] Pearce, have both been at Bristol [Baptist Academy]. We all live in love, without any distinction in these matters. We do not consider an academy as any qualification for membership or preaching, any further than as a person may there improve his talents. Those who go to our academics must be members of a church, and recommended to them as possessing gifts adapted to the ministry. They preach about the neighbourhood all the time, and their going is considered in no other light than as a young minister might apply to an aged one for improvement. Since brother [John] Ryland has been at Bristol, I think he has been a great blessing in forming the principles and spirit of the young men. I allow, however, that the contrary is often the case in academies, and that when it is so they prove very injurious to the churches of Christ. [“Discipline of the English and Scottish Baptist Churches”, Works (Sprinkle Publications, 1988), III, 481].

Admired by the serious, or, nothing worse this side of hell?

Like many great men—one thinks, for example, of the big name this year, John Calvin—the name of Andrew Fuller has aroused—and still does arouse—deep feelings pro and con. Reading a new ms on Lemuel Haynes by Thabiti Anyabwile (which we hope to publish in the Reformation Heritage Books’ series on spirituality), I noticed one remark by Haynes in which he said that the “memory of a Patrick, a Beveridge, a Manton, a Flavel, a Watts, a Doddridge, an Edwards, Hopkins, Bellamy, Spencer and Fuller is precious to us.” And in a letter dated October 3, 1802, he told his correspondent Timothy Cooley, “I have this day finished reading a fourth volume of Mr. Fuller, an ingenious European writer. You have doubtless read his “letters to the Calvinists,”—“The Gospel its own Witness,”—“The Gospel a Faithful Saying,” and the “Backslider.” They are admired by the serious; and, I think, are worthy of a place in every minister’s library.”

Yet, a day or so before reading this I read a remark made by the unorthodox Welsh Baptist minister William Richards (1749–1818) that he had been “stigmatized with Fullerism (than which nothing this side [of] hell can be worse in the estimation of some good folks)” [The Writings of the Radical Welsh Baptist Minister William Richards (1749–1818) , selected and edited John Oddy (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009), 64]. The charge was not true, but it gives a good insight into the way some viewed Fuller and his theology.

My sympathies are with brother Haynes!

By the way, look for Thabiti’s book, it is a rich feast from an Edwardsean African-American pastor.

Maria Hope--Andrew Fuller's correspondent in his final days

In January 1815, only a few months before the death of Andrew Fuller—when Britain was gearing up for its decisive showdown with the French dictator Napoleon—the Baptist leader decided to answer an enquiry about his life, his early religious impressions and conversion, from “a friend in Liverpool.” That was the very way that I described his correspondent in my The Armies of the Lamb: The spirituality of Andrew Fuller (Joshua Press, 2001), p.75. I had no more information, though, about the person in question. Imagine my delight and amazement when this afternoon—through the help of my good friend Dr Grant Gordon—I was able to identify this correspondent as “Miss Maria Hope” of “Hope Street, Liverpool.” Grant alerted me to a letter of Fuller’s best friend John Ryland Jr., in which Ryland talks about his writing of his friend’s memoir after Fuller’s death. The letter is written to Maria and Ryland talks about the letters that Fuller had written to her.

Wowsers! What a find! I must say: it was incredible to read the letter.

David Bebbington on Andrew Fuller

I never cease to be amazed at the animosity that some Christians show to the writings of Andrew Fuller. You would think they were reading the works of one of his arch-opponents, the deist Thomas Paine! As for me, I must wholeheartedly agree with the recent evaluation of the eighteenth-century Baptist divine by Dr. David Bebbington, who is convinced of Fuller’s “extraordinary importance in the history of theology” (e-mail to the author, March 11, 2009).

New painting of Andrew Fuller discovered and bought

I have long suspected that there was another oil painting of Andrew Fuller besides the one hanging in the dining hall of Regent’s Park College, Oxford. Well, such has proven to be the case. Another Fuller painting, a portrait in oils, has recently been sold at auction and is now in the hands of a lover of Fuller’s works in the south of England. This is tremendously exciting news. The portrait is by Samuel Medley, Jr (1769-1857), who was a Baptist layman and a member of John Rippon’s Church, had a career in the stock exchange and was one of the founders of University College, the University of London. He was also a painter, and exhibited at the Royal Academy. The painting was done in 1802 and was the basis for the frontispiece in John Ryland’s life of the Baptist divine.

The sale was in Northumbria, far from Fuller country, and raises questions naturally about how the painting came to be in that part of England.

I am deeply thankful to the new owner of the painting for contacting me, and hope in the very near future to display a picture of the portrait on this blog.

A lesson from a Victorian preface

Acquaintances a while ago gave me a Victorian volume that had seen better days. One of the cheap printings that characterized that era, with poor paper and even poorer illustrations, and now with the cover quite dishevelled and the binding coming loose, they could have easily decided to toss the book. But I am glad they did not. Entitled The Four Great Preachers: A Collection of Choice Sermons by Spurgeon, Moody, Talmage and Beecher the book contains a number of sermons by each of these well-known Victorian preachers along with brief biographical sketches of the four. But what I found valuable in the book was not so much the sermons, all of which can be found elsewhere in much sturdier collections. No, what I found quite illuminating was the two-page “Preface,” which was written by an unnamed Canadian editor who lived in Toronto and is dated April 10, 1885. He may well have been J.S. Robertson, the name of the Toronto publisher on the title-page. But whoever he was, his words bear a lesson for contemporary Evangelicalism.

The “Preface” begins by noting that it has been said that ‘nobody reads sermons’ any more. The editor admits that there may be some truth in this statement, but he says, ‘there are sermons and sermons’. Few, he thinks, are interested in the older style of sermons, what he calls ‘the dry type of doctrinal discourses that was once common in the pulpit’. Such sermons have been replaced by ones that are ‘more interesting’ and that contain ‘more enlivening appeals to the human heart and conscience’. There is no doubt that the author of these lines considers himself an Evangelical as the next sentence bears witness. ‘The Church,’ the editor writes, ‘as it has dropped dogma, has in large degree returned to its first work of evangelizing the world by the spirit and power of the Gospel; and in the true missionary spirit, it is going again into the highways and byways to reclaim the world to Christ, and to bring the prodigal back to the Father’.

What should forcefully strike any reader of these lines is that ‘dogma’—Christian doctrine and theology—is set over against evangelism and missions, as if the two were mutually exclusive. That winning the lost can somehow be done without a concern for theology. To be sure, there have been individuals in the history of the church who allowed have themselves to become so wrapped up in theology and its tomes that they gave nary a thought to evangelism. But such are aberrations. More exemplary is Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), the Baptist pastor and theologian, whose wrestling with the theology of the free offer of the gospel was accompanied by a deepening zeal for evangelism. Or, more authoritatively, there is the example of the Apostle Paul. Some of the Apostle’s most powerful statements on evangelism occur in his letter to the Romans (see, e.g. Romans 9:1-3; 10:9-21; 15:18-29) in the midst of some of the richest doctrinal material—‘dogma’—in the New Testament. Theology, if rightly pursued, should issue in a life of concern for the lost.

The dislike for doctrine in this Victorian “Preface” may also help us understand how sectors of late Victorian Evangelicalism helped prepare the way for the coming of Liberalism. The author of this “Preface” is certainly not a liberal. But his easy dismissal of doctrine in favour of evangelism helps explain why certain sectors of Victorian Evangelicalism found themselves without any adequate response in the face of the liberal assault on Christian orthodoxy at the end of nineteenth century and at the start of the twentieth.

One wonders if a copy of the volume was sent to each of the four respective preachers, whose sermons were reprinted in the book. If one did reach the hands of C. H. Spurgeon (1834-1892), and he did happen to read the “Preface,” he would have been surely struck by the folly of trying to separate a passion for theological truth from Christian missions. As he well knew and affirmed, it is only when the coals of Christian orthodoxy are hot and blazing that a zeal for the conversion of others can be properly sustained.

Samuel Pearce on how to conduct oneself as a missionary

When Samuel Pearce was dying in 1799, momentous things were afoot with the Baptist Missionary Society, to which he had given so much energy. They were preparing to send a number of missionaries, among them William Ward and Joshua Marshman, to India. Once Ward and Marshman arrived they would link up with Carey and form the Serampore Trio, that fruitful band of brothers in the Church of that era. Pearce wrote a deeply-moving letter to Andrew Fuller, the Secretary of the Society, from Tamerton, Devon, on May 2, 1799.[1] The following are his three recommendations regarding missionary policy. They are still wise advice today.

First, as this Society is dependent for its support on the pious public, whose least compensation should be an acquaintance with the success of those for whom their benevolence is exerted, it is highly proper that each missionary under the patronage of this Society should communicate direct and personal information concerning his own efforts, and their various fruits, at least twice in every year; to which end the Society do request that each of their missionaries would keep a regular journal of his proceedings and send it, or a copy of it, to the secretary by the spring and fall ships.

Secondly, since that kingdom which we as the disciples of Jesus wish to establish is not of this world, we affectionately and seriously enjoin on each missionary under our patronage that he do cautiously and constantly abstain from every interference with the political concerns of the country were he may be called to labour, whether by words or deeds; that he be obedient to the laws in all civil affairs; that he respect magistrates, supreme and subordinates; and teach the same things to others. In fine, that he apply himself wholly to the all-important concerns of that evangelical service to which he has so solemnly dedicated himself.

Thirdly, however gross may be the idolatries and heathenish superstitions that may fall beneath a missionary’s notice, the Society are nevertheless persuaded that both the mutual respect due from man to man, together with the interests of the true religion, demand that every missionary should sedulously avoid all rudeness, insult, or interruption during the observance of the said superstitions; recommending no methods but those adopted by Christ and his apostles, namely, the persevering use of Scripture, reason, prayer, meekness, and love.

[1] From Periodical Accounts relative to the Baptist Missionary Society I (Clipstone: J.W. Morris, 1800), 516-519.

How to critique Andrew Fuller

Silhouettee of Fuller Andrew Fuller has not been immune from criticism in the past or in the present. A few authors in the nineteenth century were quite critical of "Fullerism" for its emphasis on the necessity of faith in Christ. If faith is a gift, then they argued it cannot be a duty. A few authors in the twentieth century had similar concerns. What is disturbing about some of these attacks is not so much their critical theological comments but their ad hominem spirit.

I recently came across this marvellous review of Thomas Ekins Fuller's A Memoir of the Life and Writings of Andrew Fuller inThe Primitive Church (or Baptist) Magazine 20 (London, 1863) that shows how criticism of Fuller should be done. The author of the review begins by saying that "once for all, we must enter our protest against that system of wholesale condemnation, that will admit of nothing good in a man, if some part of his divinity system happen to be open to question." Though a man may be wrong as a divine, the author continued, he may well rank "among the most devoted servants of God" (p.254).

The author believes that "Fullerism" is not at all scriptural, yet he is prepared to argue that Fuller himself was "an eminent, a powerful, and a useful man." So passionate was he for missions and devoted to God, that the author was prepared to say: "we ardently wish there were tenfold more Andrew Fullers among us now." And in order to perpetuate "the piety, the devotedness, and self-denying zeal" of Fuller the reviewer recommended this memoir by his grandson (p.255).

Personally I do not believe "Fullerism" is unbiblical, but how refreshing to read such a review--albeit one hundred and forty-five years after it was written. This is how to critique those with whom we disagree.